A Dark Matter

Informationen zum Autor PETER STRAUB is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. In the Night Room and Lost Boy, Lost Girl are winners of the Bram Stoker Award, as is his collection 5 Stories . Straub is the editor of numerous anthologies, including the two-volume American Fantastic Tale from the Library of America. He died in 2022. Klappentext An electric, chilling, and unpredictable novel from the master of modern horror.On a Midwestern campus in the 1960s, a charismatic guru and his young acolytes perform a secret ritual in a local meadow. What happens is a mystery-all that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body and the shattered souls of all who were present. Forty years later, one man seeks to learn about that horrifying night, and to do so he'll have to force those involved to examine the unspeakable events that have haunted them ever since. Leseprobe Chapter 1 A Few Years Back, Late Spring The great revelations of my adult life began with the shouts of a lost soul in my neighborhood breakfast joint. I was standing in line at the Corner Bakery on State and Cedar, half a block down the street from my pretty brick townhouse, waiting to order a Swiss Oatmeal (muesli) or a Berry Parfait (granola), anyhow something modest. The loudest noises in the place were the tapping of laptop keys and the rustle of someone turning newspaper pages. Abruptly, with a manic indignation that seemed to come from nowhere, the man at the head of the line started uttering the word obstreperous. He started out at a level just above ordinary conversation. By the time he found his rhythm, he was about twice that volume and getting louder as he rolled along. If you had to settle on one word to yell over and over in public, wouldn’t you pick something less cumbersome? Yet he kept at it, spinning those four lumpy syllables every possible way, as if trying them on for size. His motive, for nothing actually comes from nowhere, soon became obvious. Obstreperous? ObSTREPerous? OBSTREPEROUS? Ob-strep?-ER-ous? OBstreperous? Lady, you think I’m obstreperous now? This is what he was saying. Give me another thirty seconds, you’ll learn all about obstreperous. With each repetition, his question grew more heated. The momentarily dumbfounded young woman at the order counter had offended him, he wished her to know how greatly. The guy also thought he was making himself look smart, even witty, but to everyone else in the shop he had uncorked raving lunacy. His variations were becoming more imaginative. Obstreeperous? Obstraperous? ObstrapOROUS? To inspect this dude, I tilted sideways and looked down the good- sized line. I almost wished I hadn’t. Right away, it was obvious that the guy was not simply playing around. The next man in line was giving him six feet of empty floor space. Under the best of circumstances, people were going to keep their distance from this character. Eight or nine inches of white- gray hair surged out in stiff waves around his head. He was wearing a torn, slept-in checked suit that might have been ripped off a cornfield scarecrow. Through a latticework of scabs, smears, and bruises, his swollen feet shone a glaring, bloodless white. Like me, he had papers under his elbow, but the wad of newsprint he was clamping to his side appeared to have lasted him at least four or five days. The puffed-up bare feet, scuffed and abraded like shoes, were the worst part. “Sir?” said the woman at the order counter. “Sir, you need to leave my store. Step away from the counter, sir, please. You need to step away.” Two huge kids in Southern Illinois sweatshirts, recent graduates by the look of them, jammed their chairs back and marched straight toward the action. This is Chicago, after all, where big, athletic- looking dudes sprout out of the sidewalks like dandelions on a subu...

Commentaire

Straub s return to all-out horror. . . . [He] does it on his own terms, beautifully blending monsters and demons and indescribable evil into a melancholy novel shaped and crafted as carefully as literature, not pulp entertainment. Straub s writing has rarely been better or more precise. Miami Herald
 
An alchemy of psychological suspense, supernatural horror and cultural history. . . . Ambitious in its scope and challenging in its telling. . . . Explosive. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

A modern-day supernatural Rashomon. . . . [A Dark Matter] leaves one satisfied, still eager for the next book by one of the most adroit masters of the supernatural thriller. San Francisco Chronicle

[A Dark Matter] has it all: shifting perspectives, nested flashbacks, a story that spans four decades, and an attractive, charming cast. The Onion A.V. Club
 
Vivid, mysterious. . . . An elegant, multilayered reminiscence. . . . A rich, multi-perspective take on a murky collegiate misadventure in 1966. TimeOut New York
 
[Straub] is a master at blurring the supernatural, the real-world-scary and the monsters in your psyche. Cleveland Plain-Dealer
 
A powerful, original and utterly engrossing novel about the palpability of evil and its costs. . . . . Nothing less than stunning. The Globe and Mail
 
Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter is populated with vivid, sympathetic characters, and driven by terrors both human and supernatural. It s the kind of book that s impossible to put down once it has been picked up. It kept me reading far into the night. Straub builds otherworldly terror without ever losing touch with his attractive cast of youngsters, who age beautifully. Put this one high on your list. Stephen King

Part Rashomon, part The Turn of the Screw. Peter Straub may well be the most important voice in suspense fiction today. Lincoln Child

American master Peter Straub takes the sweep of our freaky history over the past forty years, subjects it to all the elegant gifts of madness and arts of haunting of which he is the wicked king, and finds himself in possession of a masterpiece. Michael Chabon

I ve been reading Peter Straub since I was a teenager, and his work is hardwired into my brain.  A Dark Matter contains echoes of all that has been great about Straub s previous work and builds upon it. This Rashomon-like tale is as spooky and frightening as anything he has written, but it s also an intense and moving celebration of love. Out of the darkness comes, ultimately, a surprising and haunting sense of joy. Dan Chaon

Increasingly, Peter Straub brilliantly defies and blurs literary genres. A Dark Matter is a page-turning thriller of every sort: psychological, sociological, epistemological. Plus, it s really scary. Lorrie Moore

A devastatingly good novel.  In its investigation of a dark ritual that casts a decades-long shadow, A Dark Matter makes you question all you thought you knew about horror and about literature.  But it goes well beyond that: it messes with your sense of reality and then, just when you re getting your bearings, scrambles it again. Brian Evenson

Détails du produit

• Auteurs: Peter Straub
• Edition: Anchor Books USA
• Langues: Anglais
• Format d'édition: Poche format A
• Sortie: 22.02.2011
• EAN: 9781400096725
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-9672-5
• Pages: 608
• Dimensions: 108 mm x 176 mm x 33 mm
• Thème: Anchor Books
• Catégorie: Littérature > Suspense